On the road to rock & roll nirvana, family acts rarely, if ever, provide what one might call cutting edge entertainment. So when K-Tel reissues Abba or the Partridge Family in a complete boxed set, you won’t find me reaching for my credit card. The list of great rock bands with sibling members is decidedly short, and once you’ve driven past the Kinks, Van Halen, or the Finn brothers, there’s not much left to talk about. Happily, the Nields, a New England band comprised of three family members whose last name (duh!) is Nields, may soon change this perception.
If you have to attach a genre label to what they do I might describe them as alternative folk, with a pop sensibility ranging from Cowboy Junkies to Suzanne Vega to the Beatles. In other words, if Nancy Griffith fronted the Jayhawks they would sound something like the Nields.
This is not a band I liked right away. On first listen to their new release, Gotta Get Over Greta, I found their vocal harmony too often evoked bad memories of the New Christy Minstrels or Cowsills, bands whose legacy endures in cutout bins of old LPs. But after several repetitions, their folk-pop arrangements revealed a rougher edge, thanks largely to vocal interpretations given to the material by the Nields sisters, and some creative guitar lines by David Nields. Their sound has a home studio feel to it, with a minimum of fuss. Just a few acoustic and electric guitars with a steady rhythmic backing, and the occasional keyboard or harmonica. I have no idea which of the two Nields sisters, Nerissa or Katryna, sings lead, but her voice reminds me of the Cranberries' Dolores Riordan, or perhaps an Irish version of Alaniss Morisette.
Most of the lyrics were written by Nerissa Nields, who brings a particular woman’s focus to what are generally universal concerns - the search for love, the loss of youth, the longing for something better in one’s life. Songs like "I Need a Doctor," "Bullet Proof," and "Blind" recreate the heartache of adjusting one’s dreams to fit the new truth of one’s everyday reality. If you’re looking for heavy anthems to an angst ridden age, you won’t find them here. Instead, the Nields offer small moments of joy and sorrow, that linger in one’s memory as a kind of quiet paean to the mystery of who we are and what it is we are about.
